


Boxed Sweets

by Nihilistic_Janitor



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Candy, Gen, Self-Hatred, Self-Insert, toybox
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25265158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihilistic_Janitor/pseuds/Nihilistic_Janitor
Summary: In which a woman is thrust into a world of superhero shenaniganery as part of a community that cannot stand her in the slightest. At least she has candy.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

“Cranial, look. I know we’re not friends.”

Cranial looked up at the woman in the threshold.

“That is true. We are not. Sweetheart.” 

He spat her cape name like it was a curse word.

“I want- I want to stop. I want to be someone- someone different. Better. Who comes out of shit stronger. Who learns from- fuck.”

Cranial stared at her.

“I hate this! I hate me, I hate us, I hate everyone, and I hate hating! Make me stop, Cranial. Please.”

A long pause.

“I do not know who you will be after this. But it will not be you. Sweetheart.”

Sweetheart wiped her eyes.

“Anyone else.”

Cranial nodded. The woman sat down in the chair. Cranial began to strap her arms to the armrests, and her legs to the chair’s legs. He clipped her head in last. He gave her no anaesthesia.

“Goodbye,” Cranial said. Then he pressed a button, and Sweetheart was gone.

* * *

It all clicked together. I was looking at the infuriating blue sky of a jigsaw puzzle, and suddenly pieces of it were starting to fit. This spare bit could weld on here, add heat to combine these chemicals, deposit onto the belt, and then the Enrober.

I capitalized Enrober. It deserved capitalization. It was an enrober like nothing I’d ever seen before, an enrober that could cascade not only chocolate but liquid hard candy and sticky marshmallow goo and anything I set my mind to. A beautiful flowing curtain of candy, big enough to stand under. Chocolate-coated Janice.

It didn’t need to be that big. I just wanted it to be that big. If something needed chocolate coating, I wanted to make sure it could get it, no matter what it was. These things were important to me.

I started the machinery up. Time to run my first batch. My first batch since my, ahem, arrival. There had been loose, scattered, fairly morbid notes on the bubblegum-pink and licorice-black computer in the little office. Notes about candies that Sweetheart had sold. The other Sweetheart. The last one.

Let’s think about candy.

Never-Melt Ice Cream. She had read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, just like me. Shatterstorm Jawbreakers, because like me she loved to bite down on hard candies. Ginger Firecrackers, because like me spice captured her imagination and her tongue. Moonstretch Taffy, with asides on how to flavor it all the flavors of the rainbow, because like me she chewed through taffy too fast. Expanding Cotton Candy Tokens, because 

And her magnum opus, the one candy she was working on that kept her morbid self-hate out of her notes. Black Jack Bubble Gum. 

Black Jack Bubble Gum was a common fascination of ours, it seemed. I couldn’t say why she loved it so much; the scraps of her life that bled through into her notes said nothing about it, but I could easily say why I loved it so much.

I was walking on one of those streets where the buildings hug the ground and leave you exposed, and I was about ten or so, and I was with my mother. We stopped at a Walgreens for just about no reason at all, and inside my mom picked up a package of Black Jack Gum, recognizing it from her own childhood. A limited edition reprint.

I could still taste it. Not just the gum itself, unfolding a dance of aniseed in my mouth, but also the taste of the sun beating down on the Chicago streets, and the taste of security as my mom stood tall over me, and the taste of awful bitter longing that Black Jack being discontinued left in my life.

I could make it now.

The notes replicated the flavor, but there was more added on. I was a candy superhero, now. I could do that. Suddenly, there was a symphony of chemicals I could play in order to make Black Jack not just delicious but useful for those occasions when I had to venture out of my lair and face someone. Those inevitable and very worrisome occasions.

Something horrible happened to the Toybox. It didn’t make it. I only wished I remembered what it was.

As it was in the notes, Black Jack increased coordination and awareness of time. Well, as it was in the notes Black Jack made you, “a motherfucking bullet timer, and also make you skilled af like the anime doctor dude with the rad scarring on his face. I wonder if I would look good with a scar.”

Scars were pretty cool. My old body had a bunch of them. It was odd, waking up in the morning with them absent. The one along my spine, like a costume my skeleton was wearing got unzipped. The two on my arm, where my bicep became hella more metal. The scars all over my feet, and the fading one just under my lip, and...

This body wasn’t like that. I was just...whole. Wholer, even. This body had been born right, like mine hadn’t. I could walk, and dress nicely, and the bathroom had a wonderfully extensive makeup kit that I didn’t know how to use, and it was more or less everything I’d ever wanted out of my physical form.

I plucked a chocolate covered caramel off a conveyor belt, still warm and soft. All I’d had to do was consign myself to oblivion. A different myself, but what did that matter? They were just gone, now. Vanished into the ether.

The caramel was delicious. It was hard to be melancholy around a mouthful of fresh caramel. Not that I wasn’t doing my best.

I was startled out of my head by someone hammering on the door to my lab. “Sweetheart, open the fuck up!”

I swallowed the caramel. Here we go.

I opened the door to find Glace, standing there with the little tin of cookies I baked for her. I glanced down at them. She hadn’t eaten any.

“Oh, do you not like peanut butter?” I asked. Glace glared at me and shoved the tin into my hands.

“Listen, Sweetheart. I don’t know what you’re up to, or what Cranial did, or anything, because nobody tells me shit around here. But if you think I’m willing to eat anything you made, you’re dumber than you look.”

I blinked at her. “Cranial didn’t tell you?”

“No. But if you got Cranial to do something for you, it can’t have been good.” Even if Glace didn’t like me, at least she talked to me. I still hadn’t gotten so much as a hello from Big Rig.

“Well, I’m not exactly Sweetheart,” I said, pulling a cookie from the tin. “Cranial kinda replaced her with me? Well, from my perspective I was living in Aleph for like twenty years and then bam, I was here, but I think his read is probably better.” 

Glace leaned in a little closer, examining me. I leaned back slightly, taking a bite of cookie to out-sweet the awkwardness. The cookies were alright cold, but I’d messed up a little bit and cooked them a bit long, making them a little too crunchy. Kinda disappointing. Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t eaten any.

“Do you have proof?” Glace asked, finally.

“Um.” I took a pretty easy shot at why someone would be uncomfortable with a food Tinker’s food. “I gave you normal cookies? That I made in an oven? Without Tinker stuff?”

“Why?”

“I had some spare time, and I wanted to unwind a little, and then I was like, wait, I can’t eat two dozenish cookies by myself! And then I thought, well, there’s one person here who’s at least willing to talk to me a little, let’s give them to her because who doesn’t love cookies and also it’s me apologizing for past Sweetheart’s behavior, and then, um, we were here?”

Glace looked thoughtful. “Can you show me your lab?”

I grinned, and held the door open wide. Glace took a careful step.

“Welcome to Sweetheart’s Chocolate Factory!” I said, doing a little twirl. I could twirl again! I missed twirling so much. I swept an arm over my domain. Vats and conveyor belts and bubbling liquids and molds and presses and so, so much chocolate. The air was so thick with the smell of sweetness that I could probably bottle the stuff and sell it.

Glace looked over it impassively. She said, “Old Sweetheart never opened her lab to anyone. Real bitch about it.”

I blinked. “Really? Isn’t talking and working with other Tinkers supposed to be, like, half the fun?”

Glace stared at me for a long moment. Then she shrugged. “I guess you might not be her. Or you might be her turning over a new leaf in the weirdest way possible, which also fits.”

I smiled at her.

Glace turned to go. “I’ve got a piece of tech that’s been fighting me lately. I’ll bring it over tomorrow. Sound good?”

“Sure,” I said.

She left. I waited for the door to close and a safe number of receding footsteps to be heard before I did a little fist-pump to myself. Actual human contact is a go!

Now I just had to not fuck this up. Make a good impression. Look more competent than I actually was. Be personable and charming. Try to not get her to re-hate me. Simple. Easy as could be.

I just needed better cookies. These ones were trash. Delicious, delicious trash. I had my own kitchen now, and plenty of groceries in the fridge, and leftover cash from Sweetheart’s last batch of sales. And a nice...lunch? She didn’t say what time she would be coming over. I looked over my fridge.

Then I cracked my knuckles. I wasn’t in pain. I had energy, now. I could just fucking make cookies, and lunch, and I would still be able to do other things for the rest of the evening. Absolutely magical. I grabbed a carton eggs and got to work.

The next day, I had a plate of much better seeming peanut butter cookies, a nice batch of lemon garlic chicken, some steamed-but-not-too-long broccoli and carrots on the side, and an absolutely destroyed kitchen that I had only managed to make a dent in cleaning. And still had energy.

There was a knock on the door, and I tossed the candy-cane striped apron onto a chair and went to answer it with a cheery, “Yo!”

Glace was standing there, her arms full of some massive block of tech that was rimed in frost and covered in what looked like vents. She said, “Hey,” halfheartedly, and then she was making for the worktable.

“I made some food. Chicken good with you?”

Glace gave an absent, “Sure,” as she set the block down. By the time I came back into the room, she seemed to realize what the question I’d asked was, and warily looked over the food.

It was, you know, okay marinated chicken. Looked fine. I handed her one plate and sat down. She gingerly placed her plate a down as far away as the table would let her. I ignored that. That was fine.

“So, what’s the, uh, thingy?” I asked.

Glace, having apparently been waiting for the question, launched into an explanation. It was long, and involved a great deal of very sciencey words, and by the end of it I thought I’d almost sort of maybe gotten the gist of the thing which she possibly could have been getting at.

“So it’s, like, an air conditioner?”

“It’s... yes, it’s like an air conditioner, but very strong,” Glace said, slowly, like I was an idiot. Which was fair, she was talking about alien science magic and I was some asshole twentysomething with a sweet tooth too big for her own good.

“Okay. Have you tried, uh, soldering?”

Glace looked like she was two seconds from leaving and never speaking to me again.

“Kidding! Kidding. Um.” I was a candy Tinker. Candy was basically chemistry you could lick. Chemistry could make cold things. Like ice cream. Never Melt Ice Cream!

“Actually, I have some notes I could grab. Give me a moment.”

Glace looked skeptical, but I had already rushed off to the little office. Send to printer, come on come on these printers were probably full of Tinkertech why were they still so slow there it is! I rushed back, notes for Never Melt Ice Cream in my hand.

“Okay, here’s something that might help. I have this recipe for synthesizing Never Melt Ice Cream, from the last Sweetheart. It’s like, it needs to not melt but if it weren’t cold then that would ruin the texture, right?”

Glace scanned the notes.

“Well, I, or not me the other Sweetheart, apparently began with a way to...”

My Tinker-brain began to take over, like it usually did when I started getting deep into this stuff. The words coming out of my mouth didn’t exactly match up to things I knew. It was more as though I was sciencing off instinct.

Glace made a suggestion, pointing at a spot in the recipe, and suddenly we were both whirling together, snowflakes bobbing in a high-tech snowstorm. The eddies of ideas buoyed us up and around as we spun and we danced in a steel-grey sky. And then we both landed, and Glace’s block of tech was whirring, and we were both grinning dumbly at each other.

“It’s not perfect,” Glace said, the smile not dropping from her face.

“Good enough for government work,” I replied, also not letting my grin fall. Then I took a bite of chicken. It had gotten cold, but it was still decent.

Glace looked back at her plate, and her grin turned into a grimace of tight confliction. 

“I can heat it back up for you,” I said.

“Only if I get to watch.”

True to her word, she kept a close eye on me as I put the chicken into the perfectly normal microwave and set the timer. I said, “I only really do candy. It’s not like this is Tinkertech chicken that eats souls or something.”

“You believe in souls?”

“Only if they’re delicious,” I snarked.

That got a light chuckle from Glace, and then the microwave beeped and the food was ready. I handed it proudly to her as we went to sit down at the little kitchen table. Sure, the food had been microwaved and the goodness of the chicken might not have totally survived, but if she took a bite that would be one more step to having someone who could hopefully be a friend.

The lab could be lonely. Was lonely. Was almost always lonely. Don’t think about it, Janice. Just don’t think about it.

Glace took a bite. “Beats TV dinner,” she said, but she said it with a light smile and upwards-tilted tone that made me think she liked it.

“You eat TV dinner?”

Glace’s eyes wandered awkwardly away from mine, another piece of chicken moving to her mouth.

“How often are we talking here?” I asked, a little more urgently.

“A couple times a week?” she offered.

“Okay, that’s probably fine? But if you’re running low on energy, or feeling oof for no reason, or want food that’s not a TV dinner, you should come by. I’d be happy to cook for you.”

“No, that’s fine. I don’t need you to—“

“Glace, I love cooking. I’m not great, but I love doing it. I love sharing meals. I love all of it. It’s less than no trouble. Besides, I’d like to get to know you better.”

Glace stared down at her chicken, considering it.

“You don’t gotta say jack now, but just remember that the offers open, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She finished all of it before she left, which made me happy. She said she’d see me around, which made me happier. She said she might even be willing to try some of my candy then, which made me happiest.

Hopefully everyone in the Toybox would turn out to be this nice. I mean, they probably wouldn’t, but hey. I was nothing if not a starry-eyed optimist.


	2. Chapter 2

Okay.

Today was the day. The day when I had to go down to the sale floor and try to sell my sweets to the highest bidder. In person. Oh gods.

I needed the money, after all. Sure, the Toybox was well-supplied and well-stocked with everything a Tinker could want, but that stuff had to be paid for. Also food, rent, clothing, makeup, video games, random edgy jewelry, and various online subscriptions. And I was almost out of the spendable part of what Sweetheart’s bank account had started with.

Nervously I double-checked my batches of sweets. The boxes were sealed, the sample boxes had stands, the candies all looked fancy and professionally crafted and wonderful.

I picked up a reject Gummy Bear’s Endurance, one with a blobby, misshapen head. One of the only candy lines which wasn’t a product of the old Sweetheart’s work. A series of delicious multicolored gummy bears, more opaque than your standard Haribo fare, and not quite as tough to get through. Each one was naturally flavored a delicious and distinct classic candyfruit variety, one for each color of the rainbow. Strawberry, Orange, Lemon, Green Apple, Blue Raspberry, and Grape. And inside each gummy bear, a wonderful cocktail of chemicals that sharply increased awareness, banished muscle soreness, and generally made pain tolerance skyrocket. Already I could feel the reject gummy bear banishing the effects of the all-nighter I’d just pulled.

I’d taken inspiration for the candy from the D&D spell, because the old Sweetheart hadn’t. Apparently one of the differences between her and me was that she hadn’t liked roleplaying games the same way I did. Getting born the right way round probably was to blame. Why look for an escape from your body when your body is already comfortable?

I ate another reject, this one with a half-melted torso. There were also, of course, safeguards against overdosing mixed in. Effects plateaued fast after two or three gummies, depending on tolerance, but what good was a candy if you couldn’t eat tooth-disintegrating amounts of it in a single sitting?

My nerves officially as steady as they would ever be, I began to load boxes onto the little trolley I’d whipped up. Literally whipped; I’d made the thing of a sort of porous, solidified whipped cream I was planning to deploy on a later project. It was extremely tough when there was a lot of it, sort of like a hard candy, but in smaller amounts it would crack like a lollipop and then soften and expand into the classic airy deliciousness of whipped cream. This batch hadn’t reacted to moisture, so I’d just formed it into a terribly lightweight and sturdy trolley.

There was a lot of repurposed candy like that around my lab. Especially when it came to the combat gear I didn’t and would never sell. Sure, most of my combat effectiveness, what little there might be, would come from performance-enhancing sweets, but I’d still gone ahead and set aside a couple options for armor and weapons.

I was tempted to take stock of them, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to distract myself. Instead, I walked to the Enrober. If you’re gonna be selling on the main floor, you need a costume. Ideally, something good enough that you can defend yourself if you really, absolutely need to.

There was always the answer of her— my armors, but those were still very much old Sweetheart. I’d tried one on, and even though it fit perfectly, it just felt strange. Like wearing someone else’s skin. Not my style at all, covered in scratches and scuff marks I hadn’t gotten, built to specs I hadn’t thought about.

I guess I was always wearing someone else’s skin. Even before I got here. Didn’t make it feel any less disgusting, though. At least this skin fit right.

Eurgh.

Anyway, part of what I’d done between batches of Gummy Bear’s Endurance was whipping up a new costume. A fresh costume, one for me. One that was mine. That matched my style. That fit right.

I set the Enrober to Licorice and stepped under it in my underclothes.

This was a base of very elastic bright pink strawberry licorice, applied as a nice form-fitting suit. I had the figure I’d been working towards before, and I wanted to show it off. It wasn’t exactly edible anymore, unless you were really tenacious and loved the mouthfeel of rubber, but it would ideally pull the oobleck thing of hardening on impact in order to cushion blows. That plus the gummy bears and a couple other reserve candies would ideally let me get past my utter lack of combat experience.

The pink licorice onesie swept up over my head to cover up the upper half of my face and my hair. Not that my hair was in any way distinctive, though I was strongly considering dying it. I just liked the look. My mouth was still fully exposed, though. All the better to smile with, right?

Then there was a click and a whirr as the nozzles started to print out the second layer of my new costume. Black licorice this time, applied in swirling designs over my chest and arms and legs and head before meeting atop my chest in a black-on-pink version of Sweetheart’s old SH in a wrapped round candy. Gotta keep the old logo so I’m recognizable, after all.

Then it started applying both at once, in my favorite part of the new design. Punky pink spikes on black bands on my shoulders and wrists and knuckles, long sharp-looking swirly nail-claws on my hands, another band of spikes around my left thigh because it was cool, a no-reason studded black belt, thin and wrapped around twice, with a couple little satchels applied to it for emergency candy.

And, finally, a full head of literal cotton-candy hair in a stylish-ass sidecut. A little weird applying it on top of the cowl? Maybe. Worth it? Abso-fucking-lutely.

I didn’t have a weapon-weapon, but I had claws. And spikes. And tenacity. And an able body. And, hopefully, nothing would happen anyway.

I heard a knock on the door. Glace! That was probably Glace. She was working today too, so during our more-regular-by-the-day Tinkering sessions I’d asked her to accompany me down to the floor. I grabbed my cart and hurried to the door.

Glace’s combat-ready costume was a lovely suit of sensible power armor letting out occasional puffs of cold mist. I whistled appreciatively. Not super stylin by itself, but she made it work, and it probably hella performed in combat.

Her eyes took my costume in, and she said, “...you look really villainous.”

I grinned and did a little twirl. “I look punk!”

“You realize you’re trying to sell tinkertech, not scare people, right?”

“I can do both! I’m very good at multitasking.”

Glace gave me a flat stare. It wasn’t the first one she’d given me; I made a lot of dumb jokes.

“Let’s just get going,” she said.

The way down to the sales floor wasn’t exactly down. The Toybox wasn’t really so much a building as it was dimensional origami. But even so I still thought of it as ‘down’, because my brain works in ways.

Or, not really my brain, anymore. My mind, in some other me’s brain. Realities away from the person who’d said that her brain works in ways. Realities away from the person that I...would stop thinking about right now because I would rather not jump off that building before I had to go do actual work.

Glace gave me a little look and said nothing. I swept my thoughts up into the closet. I was calm and friendly and could go be depressed and shit some other time. I had presentations to give. Things to sell. Networking to do. Haha, business!

Glace turned away.

We reached the sales floor about three doorways after my sense of direction had imploded. A wide open room, sort of warehouse-like, with half-walls partitioning off little areas where the tinker shops were. Everyone had one, minus Dodge. I could see Thopter in her little area, setting up her little Da Vinci whirlygigs and suchlike. Aesthetic af.

My shop was right next door to Glace’s. I looked over Glace first as she gave a little half-wave to me and opened it up. It looked minimalistic, very Apple Store in design, though the stuff inside was all quite a bit boxier and hissier than most iPhones. The interesting thing was how despite having no air conditioning, the sheer aura of her inventions made the shop exude chill like and open door in the freezer aisle of the grocery store.

I unlocked my own shop with the little keypad by the door, and flicked the lights on without even thinking about it. Good old muscle memory I didn’t remember getting. Not freaky at all.

Inside was, I had to say, pretty fucking rad. Say what you will about Sweetheart’s taste in armor, her taste in interior design was spot-fucking-on and worlds better than my own.

Beautiful smooth dark chocolate display cases showcased model examples of the items for sale, kept preserved indefinitely by ingenious Tinkertech apparatuses I’d puzzled over the notes for already. Shelves of prepackaged goods sat awaiting perusal, colorful designs boasting of the properties they possessed. Surprisingly, she sold the sodas I’d seen recipes for on her computer as well, having taken a hint from Rocket Fizz and filled shelves under the candy with colorful mad sodas in colorful mad labels. 

She’d taken a hint from Dylan’s Candy Bar too, because at the back by the sale counter was a little Fudge Lab. Tinkertech fudge-creation supplies all sat happily awaiting use, giving me a chance to Tinker on the fly even when dealing with customers.

I opened a couple small packages of the new candies, setting them on the counter with my little “Free Samples!” sign I’d printed last night. How better to convince people something was worth buying than by giving them a taste? Besides, free samples were wonderful, and even people who didn’t buy anything would point friends to a good place with free samples.

I quickly emptied my trolley onto the shelves, making space for the new stuff by clearing out a little of the poorer-selling candies. Sweetheart had apparently made a whole load of clove-flavored candy bars, presumably to appeal to the people who actually liked the purple necco wafers best. They had nice effects, at least. Worth keeping around for myself, not worth taking up shelf space.

In their place? Gummy bears!

As I busied myself with neatening stuff up and dusting things off, I heard the chime of the door opening. Funny, actual customers were supposed to have been a long ways off. I looked up.

Big Rig. He filled up the entire doorway with his bulk. He wasn’t wearing power armor, but he had the muscles and the size to more than make up for it. Seven feet at least, judging by my absolutely subjective system of eyeballing the heights of people taller than me.

He looked over my shop slowly, taking his sweet time taking it all in before his gaze finally settled on me.

“Sweetheart.”

I gave him my best ‘please don’t hate me and/or grind my bones to make your bread’ smile.

“I see you have a new costume. And I heard about your little talk with Cranial.”

I kept my smile up as best I could despite having no idea what my little talk with Cranial entailed.

“Cranial’s a good Tinker. I trust him. But given you?” He leaned in close, and I turned the smile up slightly as I leaned back. What the fuck had Sweetheart gotten up to in here? “I don’t think for a moment you’ve stopped being so yourself. And it’ll take more than some half-assed costume to convince me.”

“Um, okay,” I said, because snappier retorts wouldn’t be in stock until my insomnia tonight.

His message delivered, he held his searchlight-glare on me a few moments more before snatching a candy bar— one of the new ones, one of the ones that I’d actually made— up from the free samples display, taking one bite of it, grimacing, and putting it back.

My expression melted into horror. What the fuck.

He left.

I carefully plucked the candy bar up, sliced the part he had bitten off and threw it away, and ate the rest myself. A careful, delicate alchemy of slightly different flavored caramels unfolded in my mouth, slipping easily away rather than getting stuck. Why let it go to waste just because he hadn’t liked it and had also been a prick?

He hadn’t even asked what it did. It wasn’t too terribly potent, none of the free samples were, but I still couldn’t help but feel as though he wouldn’t take kindly to the dizzying focus-speed of my Caramire Bar encroaching on his consciousness throughout the day.

I, however, would very much appreciate it. What better way to get through a day of actually being productive than by copious amounts of drugs? It was no dilaudid, but I also wasn’t in constant agony from anything besides my existence and the way my heart screamed its loneliness into my veins, so it was fine.

It was fine.

The bell rang. The sales floor was open. Here we go.


End file.
